The End of the World
by Dibsthe1
Summary: The world ends. Request by ZimsMostLoyalServant. NOTE: If you think I've been writing too much Gaz lately, you can just read Chapter One; it's 97% Gaz free!
1. Light

**GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODEEEEEV-EN-IIIINNNGGG!!**

_THIS is it, this is not a test, this is your DJ Dibsthe1 at radio station K-RMA, rockin' you from the earth to the far reaches of the universe! Where the Circle of Karma spins faster than the CDs, bitin' wrongdoers in theeeeeDONKEY! 'Cause we still can't say "ass" on the radio! _

_I don't own Invader Zim and I don't own karma; one belongs to Buddha and one belongs tooo The Enlightened One! _

_You just heard a request from ManosHands and a friend... who both wanted to hear Baby Gazzee scream and wet herself! I never had Tak on here before; that was part of the request! Hope you liked it!_

_Next, a request from ZimsMostLoyalServant! I've got something here that'll fill that, I could swear I left it in here on my hard drive somewhere... (sounds of clatters and thumps) And here it IS! I've still got it, but you knew that the whole time didn't you! It's just a bit dusty though... (Blowing across the mike, followed by a few loud fake sneezes and coughs). _

_I wasn't going to put this one on until later, much later, you'll figure out why as soon as it starts, oh, but you know how it is, when somebody asks you... POLITELYYY! YES! Ay, you know what I MEEEEEAAAAN... !_

**The End of The World**

Dib almost slept through the end of the world.

At around four in the afternoon, he finally pulled himself free of the mattress. An intense first year had concluded with a week of intense exams, followed up by an even more intense night out with his lab buddies. Before standing up now, he steadied himself on the edge of the bed, waiting for the room to stop swaying and trying to figure out just how sick he felt.

Thanks to daylight savings time the light hadn't yet started to fade, so Dib carefully avoided looking at the the windows. He pulled on a bathrobe before heading to the kitchen. His roommate was nowhere to be seen; he must have gone out some time earlier. Knowing him, he was already searching for a summer job. He would have a far better chance, Dib thought wryly, if he at least gave himself time to recover from the night out first.

Upon awakening, Dib usually reached for two things together, the radio and his breakfast. However the lingering effects of the previous night made him wince just to look at the radio, and while he was in no immediate danger of throwing up, his stomach was definitely not up to handling solid food. Instead, Dib turned on the water to prepare the preferred remedy for what was ailing him.

The residence was quiet, unusually quiet. Dib was thankful; he wasn't hearing sounds as much as he was feeling them. He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the stabbing ache.

Even the gentle bubbling of the percolating coffee sent short but firm probes into his skull. At least Gaz wasn't here to run and turn her stereo on full blast the second she saw he had a hangover. Dib sighed just the same. He had never been able to figure out what had filled her with such vicious malice towards him; never had he made a point of doing any such things to her. Even now, in their late teens, things between them had improved very little if at all.

At any rate, he had escaped, and was now at college. Instead of spiteful, ignorant classmates who gloated over his every misfortune, Dib now rejoiced in the company of his true peers, intelligent people who had outgrown most of their infantile sadism and who even shared some of his interests. Life after high skool had indeed become every bit as good as the anti-bullying websites had assured him it would.

He had even finally figured out just how inept Zim actually was. Oh, he continued searching for someone who would believe Zim was an alien, but at least now he did so without terror that the fate of the earth itself hung in the balance. Even doing that much would take a lower priority until he completed his degree in astrophysics.

When his coffee was finally ready Dib poured himself a cup, and after a few sips, cautiously tried turning his head to directly face the window; by this time of the afternoon, the sun had moved to the other side of the building. The kitchen window on the second floor offered Dib a view of the entire quad. Oddly, it was completely deserted, as if some major event had been scheduled for the other side of town that day and Dib alone had forgotten it. Frowning slightly, he took another sip.

When the first people ran past the building Dib at first thought it was just some guys whose last exam had been scheduled even later than his own. One of them glanced back and began to run even faster. When still more people followed them, equally frantic, Dib figured this could only be yet another school shooting. "Oh, no," he groaned. "Not here too!"

Looking past the quad, Dib now saw the street was even more full of frantically running people. He lowered his coffee mug to the table and stood up. Whatever this was, it was big.

When the dark shadow began drifting up over the quad, Dib thought, _Oh my God a - No; tornados don't act that way... _

Then he saw what was drifting down.

The perfectly round edge of a spaceship, a gigantic spaceship, a gigantic metallic-grey spaceship with glowing rim lights and bizarre, random markings, began sliding down the window...

He left coffee on the floor and the door swinging.

--

Such words as terror or panic were too weak.

It was a full-scale blitzkreig unfolding in slow motion, only worse, far, far worse...

Street after street clogged with rivers of people, people people running madly like they did in those hokey old monster movies from the 1950s only this was no movie...

People running over others who had fallen; injured people reaching up hands frantically begging for help only to be trampled by the mindless mob like they weren't even alive...

Cars plowing through the torrents of people only to slam into the traffic pileups at the intersections, grown men and women all but leaping out the windows abandoning red-faced children screaming helplessly...

Spaceships, cloud behind looming cloud of spaceships shooting rays of unworldly light at building after building, and building after building swaying, then buckling and crumbling... Dust pouring down all over everything mingling with the smoke from the fires and the flying splinters of glass and that light, that weird, glowing ungodly light, bright as a blowtorch against the growing darkness...

Some people fled to the park to hide... despite trees on fire, metal statues on fire, and somehow, impossibly, the very lake itself on fire but nobody noticing it...

And through it all Dib stumbled, barefoot and numb, eyes glazed and unseeing, mumbling over and over in a daze, "... now... do you believe me... now... do you... do you believe me... now... "

--

Something guided Dib through his worst nightmare come true, guided him through the swarming streets, clogged with dust and smoke and stripped of recognizable landmarks; something guided him back to his childhood home.

He found it still standing, though with half the roof gone, and burst in through what remained of the front door. Smoke hung everywhere; the house lay in ruins. "Dad! Gaz!" Only then did Dib see his father's body lying crumpled across the coffee table, the couch and carpet sodden with blood.

"YOU FUCKING GET IN HERE NOW!" came Gaz's shriek from the next room.

Dib leapt to the kitchen, and found Gaz rather effectively holding off a gun-weilding alien of some sort, messing up its aim by hurling one kitchen appliance after another at it.

The only thing Dib could tell about the creature was that it wasn't Irken.

The second she noticed Dib however, Gaz completely forgot about throwing anything; instantly she ducked under the table and pointed straight at him.

"Don't hurt me, take my brother! He's the one you want! I'm just a little girl!"

Just as Dib grabbed a toaster and prepared to aim it, the alien had him in its sights; Dib's brain fried, his heart exploded and his lungs ruptured all in the same second and he fell flat on his back in a spreading lake of blood, arms spread wide.

Spectacular though it was, Dib's death was instant, and completely painless.

--

Aliens dragged, shoved, and drove survivors of the attack onto the ship after ship, cramming them into lightless, cavernous slave holds reeking with blood and feces, throbbing with echoes of crying, screaming, cursing, praying, and most terrifying of all, laughter... wild, hysterical laughter...

No one dared guess to what fate they were headed.

As never before in human history, the living truly envied the dead.

Just before she was shoved into the hold, Gaz turned to try one last time to fight her way free. The nearest alien twisted her around, slamming her up against the wall with her face against one of the ports. She heard metal scrape metal and a dull hum, followed by the sensation of motion. Instantly, faster than from any airplane, the ground fell away.

The last human to behold the earth watched through the port as it grew steadily smaller far below. The vast clouds of alien ships surrounding the earth began peeling away from it to follow the rest of the fleet. As the clouds thinned, giant explosions suddenly blossomed on its surface, one after another and another; slowly the earth fell to pieces like a gigantic Christmas ornament. Its molten middle blazed furiously for half a moment, then swiftly faded even blacker than the surrounding space. The home of humans and all known living things was now visible only as a rapidly dwindling spot in space, a spot through which no stars shone.

The earth was no more.


	2. Regular

Chapter Two

Pushing a wheeled dustbin in front of her, Gaz slowly made her way though the service entrance of the Massive. Her lip still curled each time she did this. A long time ago, this was how she used to slip into places ahead of Dib, but the words had long ago lost any thrill. Long ago, as in twenty years long ago.

That was when the raiders had sold as slaves the last remaining humans in the universe, the few who survived that long, nightmarish space voyage. Most aliens in the universe were more civilized than to trade other living creatures as slaves, but this, of course, did not apply to the Irkens. The Irkens were always more than willing to acquire additional bodies to work to death in return for minimal food and shelter.

To thwart her captors Gaz refused to learn any skills or follow any orders. This didn't work for long; the Irkens had truly diabolical ways to break the will of any human. Eventually they forced her into into service as a janitorial drone, which required very few skills, practically no training, and which got her even less respect than most slaves.

Gaz still had enough backbone left to be horrified. When first confronted with what her future was to become she had fought this indignity madly, but Irken discipline soon convinced her that struggling and rebellion were only making an already bad situation much worse. Slowly she began to settle into a routine, gritting her teeth against this mockery of a "job" more suited to a kindergarten dropout or a brain-damaged monkey.

Even on earth Gaz had always looked down to avoid seeing all those stupid grins on all those idiotic faces, but up here she had even more reasons to do this. She had no desire to meet, or even to see, any of these hated beings that considered themselves her "owners." It also meant she wouldn't be punished for not doing her job; she was under strict orders not to miss any empty drink containers, discarded snack bags or fast food wrappers.

She now spotted an empty chip bag and paused long enough to stoop over, pick it up, and drop it into her dustbin. Gaz knew a race as technologically advanced as the Irkens was capable of devising an automatic waste disposal system; she suspected they only wanted to humiliate and degrade the humans as much as possible.

As she approached the Convention Hall and heard the riotous cheering inside, Gaz groaned.

This place got stupider every day.

--

Much as she tried to block it all out, Gaz couldn't help noticing more excitement than usual in the Hall today. She soon realized a third Tallest was being enthroned, or whatever they called it up there.

Yes, Gaz still called Irk "there." She adamantly refused to call it "here," as did the rest of the humans, those shallow, happy-go-lucky idiots who still kept looking for some "bright side." Gaz forced herself to remain as angry as she was on the first day she set foot on Irk; she figured that as long as she did this, she wasn't giving in.

As Tallest Amber stalked out onto the stage, the cheers that greeted him threatened to raise the roof. Gaz shook her head at the stupidity of the Irkens who actually welcomed yet a third useless ruler, one who would gorge himself on snacks, make self-praising speeches, and shoot still more of them out of the

airlock whenever it suited him.

--

Amber was exactly as tall as Red and Purple, but the difference was that Amber was much younger and so had not reached his full adult height. His antennae were unique among Irkens, leaning slightly forward very briefly, then sweeping sharply backwards in a long scythe shape.

Something or other now made Gaz think of Dib. Odd, she hadn't thought about him for 20 years. At least he had died when he did, right before he would have had any success in life. It wasn't as if he would have deserved success... the sheer bullshit he could babble on about for hours, each theory wilder and more idiotic than the last one...

Reincarnation had to be the craziest one of them all. "You keep saying 'Why bother,' to everything, but just listen a minute, Gaz. Many old religions believe that when you die, you come back again in a different body, and you're at the same point you were when you left off. If you work hard all your life for something but die before you can get it, you will still receive it... in your next life! If you never help anybody else, you could be stuck doing something really boring in your next life! Video games are really just toys, you know, and - " Only when Gaz nearly sent him to his next life then and there did he shut up.

Gaz now shook her head to clear it of the irritating memory and walked on.

She couldn't help hearing the older Tallests trying to outdo each other in sucking up to Tallest Amber; they both knew this newest member of the ruling class would some day soon be taller than either of them.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering this for you," Tallest Red fawned, as he offered Tallest Amber a heaping bowl of cheese powdered popcorn. "I know how much you like it!"

"Have a pop mixed with shaved ice!" Tallest Purple broke in, passing Tallest Amber his own drink without tasting it. "They're called 'Icies'!"

"And after that, would you care to sample our newest snack, chocolate covered corn chips?" Red wasn't letting Purple upstage him.

Not to be outdone, Purple added, "Did you hear about this even newer snack, deep fried, er, uh... candy bars! I will command the kitchen drones to prepare a batch especially for YOU!"

"And this evening there will be a LASER show in your honor!"

"Oh but that's just the opening act for the much better SMOKE MACHINE show... "

Tallest Amber burped and reached for more snacks, licking his lips with a long snake-like tongue. Gaz groaned loudly and pushed the wheeled dustbin faster away from that sickeningly obvious display of sucking up. She never liked going anywhere near the Tallests, and this day was the worst yet.

At this point, Tallest Amber finally noticed the garbage drone. Having finished Purple's Icy, he dropped the cup on the floor. He cleared his throat loudly and began counting the seconds until she came back to pick it up.

She was slow to come back, but certainly she wasn't slow about snatching it up. As he watched her hastily walking away, Tallest Amber narrowed his eyes. She wasn't treating him with the respect due him as a Tallest. She would need additional discipline.

He would definitely keep an eye on that one.

The Beginning

_(A/N) We haven't had a really big end of the world for a while now, have we? _

_And to anyone who was disappointed when Dib died painlessly... and I KNOW you're out there... I will NOT. Apologize! _

_You're listening to radio station K - RMA! Dib vs. Gaz IS! the OTC at THIS radio station, the One True Conflict. _

_That's "Conflict," NOT "pairing"! "Pairing"? What's a "Pairing"? Is that like in "Thank you ladies and gents; I'm a-pairing every night this week!"? _

_And the next number after this is a request for something that does NOT involve Gaz; in fact I've got three of them right here now and I'm... juggling... them... whatever one... Uh! I DON'T drop and break... (SMASH!) Oops! will... be the one I... (SHATTER!) Uh oh! will put on NEEEEXT!! (That was close.)_

_And here is the SURVIVOR! The tribe... has... SPOKEN! _

_I would have played it quite a while back actually, but a couple of bricks got hurled through the studio window so we had to stop and kinda, you know, sweep up the mess... _


End file.
